


He's Funny, Sweet, Cute, and He's A Total Nightmare

by blackpercy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, and there isn't enough fluff either, everybody say "thank you simiiiii", ft. ace mj, i have come to change that, i'm petermj trash oh my GOSH, i'm returning to my roots, mj is one of us one of us onE OF US, there's not enough petermj centered fics in this this tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26926060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackpercy/pseuds/blackpercy
Summary: “You, Peter Parker, are especially cruel because when you’re sad, I’m sad, and I notice when you’re sad. I can read people like magazines, and you’re no different but your emotions affect me and it freaking sucks. I have a reputation, and by making me happy, you’re ruining it. So you need to stop."Or: a fluffy ficlet about MJ dealing with her crush on Peter
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	He's Funny, Sweet, Cute, and He's A Total Nightmare

MJ draws him a lot.

Usually during moments when he’s far away and can’t see her. When he’s smiling that optimistic, hopeful smile. This afternoon was one of the few times where his hair wasn’t gelled down. His curls were flying freely and his chin was tilted up and his eyes were squeezed shut.

Her lips curl up and she sketches the curve of his jaw, the slight opening where his mouth is slightly ajar. The light from a nearby window dances on his face, taking the openness of his expression as an invitation. He glows. She sits at the window seat of the library and attempts to capture Peter Parker’s joy. 

She can’t. At that moment, his happiness is too full to squeeze into a small piece of blank paper in her sketchbook. The way the sliver that she can see of his eyes twinkles, the tinny jingle of his laugh, the pure _light_ he is radiating.

MJ can’t possibly put it on paper. She's good, but no artist is good enough to depict the full-to-bursting radiance of Peter Parker.

She’s spent enough time watching him to know subtle things about him. MJ knows when Peter is trying his best to conceal a wound that Spider-healing can’t heal quickly enough. He tends to walk a bit stiffly. It’s a subtle change, but it’s there, and she notices.

She knows when memories haunt him. She knows this because of the sag in his shoulders and the far-away look in his dark brown eyes. His lips draw into a tight line, and he spaces out. 

MJ always says something funny when he does that. She doesn’t like to see him sad. Her status as the school’s rebel hangs in the balance, but she never gets caught.

“Hey, Michelle!”

The voice that calls her out is unmistakable. It’s Peter’s cheerful tone. She glances up from her sketchbook, closing it quickly as she meets his dark-brown eyes.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

Her words are rushed, too quickly, and too unlike her normal chilled pace. She schools her expression and raises an eyebrow. Peter still smiles.

“Wanna sit with us? We’re talking about Edgar Allen Poe and you’re kind of the expert.”

She assesses him. The sleeves of his blue Midtown sweatshirt are rolled up to his forearms, his Converse-clad feet have taken a comfortable stance. He runs a hand through soft brown curls.

MJ nods. It was a little bit too eager, but she tones it down. She even tries for a smile.

“Sure, um, yeah, I’ll sit with you guys.”

MJ turns to gather her things and, with her back turned, she doesn’t see Peter’s enthusiastic smile and he doesn’t see her shy one.

* * *

Peter notices her.

Strangely, her sardonic wit and cold tendencies don’t turn him away. Michelle is a mystery, and she's interesting to be around. He likes her.

(Well, not like that, of course. He just thinks she's a nice person to be around. Well, she _isn’t_ very nice but you get what he means.)

(You get what he means, right?)

Peter used to think that Michelle was sad. She wasn’t sad. In her words, she was just “in a constant state of melancholic cynicism.”

He wasn’t sure what that meant, but she was probably right.

He sneaks a glance at her from across the lunch table. Ned was talking about a Star Wars fanfic he had read the night before that had made him shut down his phone. Peter was only half-listening. 

Michelle’s brown hair wasn’t pulled back into a messy ponytail for once. It curled and pooled around her shoulders, framing her angular face. It was kind of shiny, the individual flyaways seemed like gold. Her dark eyebrows were drawn in concentration as she stared at her sketchbook. She had rolled up the sleeves of her gray sweatshirt, and he caught a flash of a floral design creeping up her forearm.

She looked kind of perfect.

He leaned forward. “Michelle!”

She snapped to attention. Her eyebrows shot up before being pulled back down in their grumpy expression.

“Yeah?”

A small smile turned his lips up. Absentmindedly, he ruffled his hair. “What are you drawing? You seem pretty concentrated on it.”

Michelle rolls her eyes and scoffs. “I would concentrate on anything if it meant I don’t have to associate with you dorks.”

Ned’s eyebrows furrow as he looks at the other girl in confusion. 

“If you don’t want to be associated with us, why do you sit with us every lunch?”

Peter cocks his head in Ned’s direction, sucking his teeth to hold back his triumphant smile. “He’s got a point, Michelle.”

Michelle just shrugs, a dry smirk curling the corner of her lip. She leans forward on her forearms, giving the two boys a view of her frizzy, light-brown hair.

“I never said I didn’t want to be _associated_ with you, I said I didn’t want to _associate_ with you.”

She takes a bite out of an apple Peter didn’t know she had and gets up, flashing the two her middle finger as she walks out of the cafeteria to Thor-knows-where.

Peter and Ned exchange a glance. Peter sighs.

Before they can completely relax, though, Michelle pops back into the lunchroom with a smug grin.

“Also, my friends call me MJ!” She calls it out and is gone in a flash. Questions flood Peter’s mind. 

Does this mean they’re friends? Would he lose his arm if he called her MJ? What did this mean?

He tries his best to clear his thoughts as he takes a bite out of his sandwich. He can never truly win with Michelle Jones.

* * *

MJ decides to confront him on the day of the Academic Decathlon party.

All year round, Peter has _infected_ her with something. His dorky rambles made her smile, his happiness made her happy, she was actually affected by a flash of hurt that had crossed his face when she had made a particularly cold dig.

She had a reputation to uphold, for crying out loud! She couldn’t be caught bumbling over some boy like a fool.

MJ is reading a book about The Black Dahlia murder in the corner of the room when Peter approaches her. Her eyebrows furrow warily as he sits next to her and stretches a cupcake in her direction. She doesn’t scoot back but she doesn’t relax.

“What do you want?”

Peter’s eyebrow quirks up, and MJ almost wanted to push him off the seat. She despises the way her heart skips, the way her mind seems to latch onto that single expression. 

“We’re at a party and you’re sitting in the corner reading a book.” He deadpans it like the problem is obvious. MJ gets it, but she makes him elaborate anyway.

“And?”

Peter doesn’t answer, instead, he sits with her. He sits a ways away, careful not to invade her personal space. MJ is glad he remembers.

“I can’t believe we’re gonna be seniors,” he breathes. Wonder laces his voice as if the passage of time is something that baffles him. MJ doesn’t look up from her book.

“It’s amazing how fast three-hundred-sixty-five days can go by,” she says matter of factly. Peter grins.

“And don’t forget the twenty-four hours inside each day.”

“That’s eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours in a year,” she finally looks up from her book, a wide grin that was so unlike her lifting her features. “Time is just nature, yeah, but it’s so crazy how it’s a rule of life but it’s also relative cause it doesn’t seem to go very fast at the time but-”

“You have a really pretty smile.”

MJ stops mid-sentence. She meets Peter’s eyes. A blush is spreading around his face and he’s rubbing his knuckles sheepishly. She honestly feels the same way.

She learns how to breathe again after a couple of moments. For some reason, she feels very very angry.

“That’s not fair,” she says slowly. Peter looks confused, but he lets her speak.

“That’s not fair,” she repeats herself louder and more confidently. She straightens her spine and looks him dead in the eye. “You can’t just...you can't just _say_ things like that and...and _be_ like that and expect me not to-”

She clamps her mouth shut. Panic invades her mind and presses every alarm as she shuts up. MJ watches Peter come to a realization slowly. He inches closer to her so their toes are touching.

“MJ,” he whispers as if he can’t believe it himself. “...what were you going to say?” 

MJ steels herself for the inevitable cutting-off after Peter Parker discovers that the school’s loner has a crush on him. She clutches the book closer to her as she tries to push the words out.

“You…” they weren’t coming out. MJ couldn’t formulate a sentence that would sound natural coming out of her lips.

_To heck with it_.

She closes the book and looks at Peter as boldly as she could muster. 

“You’re annoying,” she begins. MJ’s philosophy is pure honesty, so that is what she will deliver. “You’re annoying because you’re optimistic and kind and you make me happy, and I’m not supposed to be happy because happy is for suckers. You’re terrible because you make me feel weird stuff even though you’re a dork.” 

Peter has an eyebrow raised, and he’s smiling a little bit. He lets her continue, which was good because she showed no signs of stopping.

“You, Peter Parker, are especially cruel because when you’re sad, I’m sad, and I notice when you’re sad. I can read people like magazines, and you’re no different but your emotions affect me and it freaking sucks. I have a reputation, and by making me happy, you’re _ruining_ it. So you need to stop.  
  


Peter’s lips quirk up. He runs a hand through his hair. “What should I stop, MJ?” He bats his eyelashes innocently, which only stokes MJ’s current fury.

“Stop making me like you!”

She slaps a hand over her mouth as soon as she screams it. MJ screams to the entire class party that she likes Peter Parker and if she could turn back time, she would take it back. Peter, despite the eyes of all their classmates, is smiling too widely for his face to contain. She stands up, which might not have been a very good move because now her feet refuse to move her out of that awkward situation.

Peter takes her hand, and MJ can’t find it within herself to mind. His expression is a mixture of amused and soft. He pulls her back down to the spot she was sitting on the floor.

“I like you too,” he whispers. 

MJ’s mind is blank. It was trying to process the events of the last one minute and it was struggling to find a logical explanation for it all. 

She blinks. Once. Twice. Rebooting, rebooting, rebooting…

“You _what_?!” 

She whisper-shouts this. Peter chuckles at her baffled response.

“MJ, I’ve liked you for maybe...I don’t know, six months, two weeks, and three days.”

MJ scoffs despite herself. “What, have you been keeping a calendar?”

Peter grins as he moves to look her in the eyes. MJ smiles back. He lifts a hand, hesitating.

“Can I?”

MJ knows he isn’t going to kiss her. She came out as ace in sophomore year. She nods and sighs as he cups her face and leans his forehead on hers. MJ closed her eyes and silenced her incredulous inner monologue. 

MJ’s smile widens. This is much better than her book.


End file.
